Monday, April 25, 2016
Cruz and Kasich Together -- If They Really Are -- Cannot Beat Trump
Reuters reports that Republican presidential rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich agreed on Sunday to stay out of each other's way in three upcoming GOP state primaries in last minute collusion meant to block front-runner Donald Trump from winning the party's presidential nomination. Cruz's campaign said in a statement he would be focusing on Indiana to give Kasich a clearer shot at Trump in Oregon and New Mexico, where Kasich expects to do well. Kasich, in turn, will shift his resources west and away from Indiana. The Indiana primary is on May 3, Oregon's is May 17 and New Mexico's June 7. ~~~~~ Trump has won the most state primaries, but he also has to win most of the remaining primaries to collect the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination on the first ballot at the July Republican National Convention in Cleveland. The Cruz and Kasich campaigns believe their Sunday agreement could help limit Trump's ability to win the needed 1,237 delegates. If no candidate has 1,237 delegate votes on the first vote at the GOP Convention, many delegates will be allowed to switch sides on subsequent ballots. Some Republican strategists who oppose Trump have been calling for such a deal for weeks. The question now is whether the Cruz-Kasich deal is too late. ~~~~~ Many Republican leaders, who think Trump would lose the White House and cause down-ballot losses in the House and Senate elections in November, say the race will and should go to a second or third ballot if no candidate reaches 1,237. Trump has for some time complained that party officials are rigging the system against him. For example, in February, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney said the campaign playbook that governed past primaries is "shredded" and suggested that candidates gang up against Trump. In mid-April, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said : “When a nominee gets to 1,237, he will actually be the candidate. If he doesn’t, there will be a second ballot, and about 60% of the delegates who are bound on the first ballot will be free to do whatever they want....And I’m increasingly optimistic that there actually may be a second ballot.” McConnell later said he had expressed himself "inelegantly." ~~~~~ A Real Clear Politics Monday polling report shows how right Trump is in labeling the Cruz-Kasich move "desperation." The polls show that in all but one primary, Cruz and Kasich combined cannot beat Trump. *According to the latest USA Today/Suffolk poll on the Republican presidential nomination, Trump leads Cruz, 45% to 29%. Kasich trails at 17%. *A Pennsylvania GOP presidential primary PPP survey shows Trump leading Cruz, 51% to 25%, with Kasich at 22%. *A Connecticut GOP presidential primary PPP survey has Trump ahead of Kasich, 59% to 25%. Cruz is at 13%. According to a Gravis Connecticut poll, Trump leads Kasich, 54% to 27%. Cruz trails at 9%. *A Rhode Island GOP presidential primary PPP survey,
Trump leads Kasich, 61% to 23%, with Cruz at 13%. A Gravis Rhode Island poll has Trump ahead of Kasich, 58% to 21%. Cruz trails at 10%. *A Maryland GOP presidential primary Gravis poll shows Trump leading Kasich, 53% to 24%, with Cruz at 22%. ~~~~~ Sunday, Trump tweeted : "Wow, just announced that Lyin' Ted and Kasich are going to collude in order to keep me from getting the Republican nomination. Desperation!" ~~~~~ Dear readers, watching the GOP leadership and the Republican National Committee go from "It'll be over by March, Jeb is the candidate" to self-destructive public plotting against the only candidate actually bringing record numbers of GOP voters to the polls is, as Trump says, "pathetic." What's more, it is amateurish. In Indiana, 22% of Kasich voters say Trump is their second choice. Kasich said Monday that his Indiana supporters should vote for him, he never told them not to. It seems likely the Cruz-Kasich deal will simply help Trump because 'desperation politics' doesn't work. Send the amateurs packing. Vote for Trump this week.
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“Get thee glass eyes, and like a scurvy politician seems to see the things thou dost.” -
ReplyDeleteKing Lear, Act 4, scene 6
Politicians all maybe that only see what best suites him, rather than what may best suit citizens or at very least the political party.
The remaining GOP primaries will be a chaotic mess of winners and losers. None of which may be controlled by any deals that any two would be winners may make.
ReplyDeleteEthnicity still counts. Its shows in every years voting patterns from New York to Wisconsin, to Florida, to New Mexico, to California. Though the pollsters which to convince us to believe ethnicity doesn’t matter much anymore; only race does. This is the implicit assumption behind the analyses that divide the electorate into four racial categories: whites, blacks, Hispanics and Asians.
Trump will hold his own until the contest reaches California on June 7th. That is where his fate to secure the nomination on the first ballot lies. California’s registered Republicans tend to be relatively old, offspring of the Midwesterners who moved to the West Coast in the decades after World War II. These are the people whose parents gave the nation Ronald Reagan and who lament what has befallen California since.
Most likely the few Republicans who live in three dozen of heavily Democratic congressional districts that each elect three delegates, will decide if they want to give us Donald Trump as the GOP nominee on the first ballot – not any deals conjured up between Ted Cruz and John Kasich.
I wholly agree with “Erstwhile’ comments. Except I think they stop short of the real possibility.
ReplyDeleteThe real as I see it is that IF the Republicans go to their convention with no first ballot winner already established – then there is a most likely chance that we will not know who the eventual candidate is, because it will not be Trump, Cruz or certainly not Kasich. Kasich is much damaged goods, and so is Cruz.
So who could it be? Maybe the owner of this statement –
“That is the key difference between ourselves and the progressives: We do not believe we should be governed by elites. We do not believe that there are experts or elites who should steer us in their preferred direction. We see that sense of organization as condescending, paternalistic, and downright arrogant. We know it’s wrong. […]
“Because we believe that all of us are equal, we believe there is no problem that all of us – working together – cannot solve. We believe every person has a piece of this puzzle, and only when we work together do we get the whole picture.” - Paul Ryan